


fall hard (you hit me out of the blue)

by cryalot



Category: Assassination Classroom
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, Slow Burn, give asano a break 2k19, i have no idea what im doing, i want fluff sue me, no beta we die like men, sketchy bureaucratic operations
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-10-25 01:52:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17715806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cryalot/pseuds/cryalot
Summary: Gakushu is still sitting on his bed, staring blankly at the wall with his feet tangled in his blankets, phone still up against his ear. He is dead inside.For a moment, Gakushu considers putting down his phone. Going back to sleep. It is a Thursday, and he has no obligation to help Akabane commit a crime, on international grounds, no less. As the CEO of a prominent and rapidly growing company, he has a reputation to consider.-post canon, where gakushu is now a successful CEO in silicon valley. it's very unfortunate for him when a certain redheaded bureaucrat visits california.





	1. an unorthodox reunion

 After ignoring the ringtone of his phone for the fourth time, Gakushu blearily opens his eyes and glares at the screen of his phone. His room is still dark- which is not a surprise, given that his clock currently reads _04:17_. Growling in irritation, Gakushu sits up and grabs his phone, which displays a number that he doesn’t have in his contacts. Not that the twenty-five year old cared. He was going to pick up, give the idiot a piece of his mind for calling at this godforsaken time in the morning, and hang up and go back to sleep.

  “Hel-” Gakushu begins, but he is cut off by an unexpected voice, speaking breathlessly in Japanese.

 “ _Asano! It’s been a while. I thought you would never pick up!_ ”

Gakushu frowns. Although it’s been a while, he knows that voice. It was-

 “Akabane? Is that you?” He asks. Although he’d initially answered in English, considering that he now lived in America, it felt good, slipping back into Japanese. On the other end of the line, he hears a muffled _thump_ and distant. indistinct shouting in another language-was that Chinese?-, followed by soft and delighted laughter.

 “ _So you_ do _recognize me! The thing is, I kind of need you to pick me up-_ ”

 “Akabane- it’s _four in the morning_ and-” Gakushu pauses, “-I currently live in _America_ -”

 “ _Oh, I know!_ ” Akabane, who now sounds like he is running, replies. “ _That’s, uh, kind of the point, actually. I’m in your area right now. I’ll text you the location, ‘kay?_ ”

 “Hold on,” Gakushu snaps groggily. “How do you know where I am? What makes you think I’d pick you up from whatever the hell it is that you’re doing, especially at _four in the-_ ”

 “ _You’re looking to expand your company back home, aren’t you? I could make that easy for you. Pull a few strings, you’d have minimal regulations and inspections to deal with, but I can’t do that-_ ” Akabane yelps as the sound of rushing air suddenly makes the line crackle with static, punctuated by what sounded suspiciously like gunshots. “ _-if I’m dead!_ ” Akabane finishes gleefully. He sounds like he is running again. “ _Just pick me up where I tell you to!”_ The line cuts off.

Gakushu is still sitting on his bed, staring blankly at the wall with his feet tangled in his blankets, phone still up against his ear. He is dead inside.

 For a moment, Gakushu considers putting down his phone. Going back to sleep. It is a Thursday, and he has no obligation to help Akabane commit a crime, on international ground no less. As the CEO of a newly prominent and rapidly growing company, he has a reputation to consider.

 ...But then again, he _has_ been considering expanding his company back home in Japan. And Japan is infamous for its endless and incredibly inane regulations and inspections on businesses, a key factor in making Gakushu decide to set up his own start-up in California instead, where they were a lot more lax. If he could somehow skip all of the red tape, it would save so much time and money, not to mention the hassle that would come with hiring employers….

 His phone pings with an address. Gakushu looks at it. The location is a thirty minute drive away. Swearing, Gakushu reaches for his clothes and car keys. _Damn it, Akabane._

 

When Gakushu pulls up next to the convenience store that Akabane had texted him, he sees a figure standing in a black hoodie with a backpack slouched against the wall. Although the person had their hood up and wore a face mask, Gakushu saw the familiar flash of mercury eyes and the tips of red hair peeking out from under the hood when they lift their head. Their eyes meet in recognition, and Akabane hurriedly glances around before darting up to Gakushu’s car and sliding quickly into the passenger seat. Before Akabane has even fully closed the door, Gakushu is already speeding down the street, speed limit be damned. He may not know what type of bullshit Akabane has gotten himself involved in, but he does know that he wants no part in it if the situation ever goes public.

 For the first five minutes, they drive in a tense silence. Akabane clutches his backpack closely against his chest, and continuously scans the side and rearview mirrors as they zip through the city. It is not until Gakushu reaches the highway that Akabane relaxes slightly, and leans back into his seat.

 Once he’s driving at a good eighty on the deserted interstate, Gakushu feels comfortable enough to turn and glare at the redhead.

 “Care to explain why I’m picking you up from a gun fight at four in the damn morning?” Akabane finally turns to him, pulling down his face mask, but keeping his hood on. Besides being taller than he used to be and having a more sharp and defined face, Akabane looked the same as he did back in Kunugigaoka. His hair was longer, perhaps, and windswept, presumably from whatever the hell he’d been doing during their call.

 “There’s this international conference going on over the state of our dear planet,” Akabane replies, with a concerning lack of dispute over Gakushu’s usage of the term _gun fight._ “They’ve got reps from all over the globe… Watanabe is actually the representative for Japan, but I decided to tag along, pay a few visits to some old faces who were also coming for this special event.”

 “I didn’t realize it was a custom to pay diplomatic visits at _four in the morning_ ,” Gakushu replies, still miffed. Akabane snickers.

 “Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t official….in any way, shape, or form. Just meeting a few old friends, making up for some unfinished conversations, all that.”

 “And would those conversations have anything to do with that bag that you’re currently trying to squeeze the life out of?” Gakushu indicates the backpack- an unassuming, plain black thing, no doubt filled to the brim with classified information.

 “This?” Akabane grins, teeth sharp and eyes unsettling. “My good friends from China….ah, we could say that they were leaving a few things lying around that should _not_ have been unattended. So naturally I, being a considerate person, attended to these things for them.” Gakushu stares at the redhead, deadpan. Not that he should be surprised. It makes sense that Akabane’s troublemaking tendencies would extend from his school days to his current job as a bureaucrat.

 “Why are you telling me any of this, anyway? Not that I care, but this doesn’t sound like information you should just be giving out to people.”

 Akabane snickers, sounding genuinely amused. “That’s ‘cause you’re my accomplice! You’re driving my getaway car, after all.”

 Gakushu frowns, straightening in his seat. “I’m only doing this as a favor to an old classmate of mine, and I am unaware of the situation surrounding the circumstances under which you have asked for me to pick you up,” he replies in a cool, detached voice that he uses primarily during conferences. Akabane smirks.

  “Practicing for the courthouse already? I doubt that would hold up, considering I’m a prominent bureaucrat for Japan.” The redhead reaches up to brush a few strands of hair out of his eyes.

  “As if I would ever get caught,” the two say in unison. They pause, looking at each other. Even in the dark, Akabane’s eyes are bright and piercing. Then, they look away and Akabane laughs again, and the gleeful and almost childish sound nearly make Gakushu’s lips twitch up into a smile. Nearly.

 “Oh yes, oh great and mighty CEO who could give me sixteen reasons as to why your actions are justified, but still can't rank #1 more times than I could during finals-”

 “-I've technically ranked first more times than you, Akabane,” Gakushu says. “Or has your head gotten so damaged from all your gang activities that you've completely forgotten about junior high?”

  "Eh, I wasn't trying the first two and a half years. Those don't count," Akabane says flippantly, waving a hand in the air. "Let me see, if my damaged brain serves me right: I ranked first three times, we tied twice, and you've won two times. Three is more than two, you know. See, Asano, this is why I kept doing better than you in high school."

  "The tie during second year winter finals were bullshit and rigged, and you know it. I would have won if the idiot passing out the tests hadn't cut himself and bled all over my damn test sheet," Gakushu retorts. If his fingers tighten and his eyes flash in annoyance, well, it’s not like Akabane can prove anything. This is stupid. Here they are at four in the morning, reunited for the first time in seven years, driving away from a crime scene and arguing about junior and high school test scores. 

 “Where are we going, anyway?” Akabane asks after a few moments. Gakushu stills. He had been so groggy and disoriented, which, combined with the adrenaline rush of literally picking being a part of the world’s most vague hit-and-run and then arguing with the culprit like two twelve-year-olds, have made him autopilot, and now he’s just driving forward aimlessly. If they want to get to his house, Gakushu needs to exit in about four miles. Despite the fact that Akabane apparently knew where he lived-how did he get access to that information, anyway-considering the extremely likely possibility that they were being followed, Gakushu would really rather not lead any potential trackers right to his front door.

 “Are you staying at a hotel?” Gakushu asks. The redhead hums noncommittally.

 “I’d rather not lead them to it, if we were being followed. I’d assume that’s also not what you want with your house, is it?”

 “Yeah.” Gakushu says, and looks at the clock. It is five in the morning. The _sun_ hasn’t even come up yet, and the sky is still pitch black, for god’s sake. He just wants to go back to sleep. “Akabane, I am holding you to your promise.”

 “Yeah, yeah,” Akabane nods, waving his hand as he pulls out his phone. “Consider your company successfully passed all the hoops and regulations of the Japanese bureaucracy. Easy peasy, and all that….hey, how d’you feel about dropping me off at this hotel? We can stop and look for any trackers on your car or around us, and then you can go home. That cool?”

 Gakushu nods, looking at the location of the hotel. It’s close, about a two minute drive away. After that, blissful sleep.

 

 When they get there, Akabane searches the area for drones or suspicious people while Gakushu checks his car for any trackers.

 “Just call the number I called you on when you’re gonna start the whole move,” Akabane tells Gakushu as he walks towards the lobby of the hotel. Gakushu nods. “Better not get arrested before then, Akabane.”

 “No promises,” Akabane calls back. Gakushu only shakes his head as he gets back into his car. Once he’s settled in his seat, he pulls out his phone to input his address on the GPS. He doesn’t really recognize the area that he’s taken Akabane in, and he’d rather not get lost at five in the morning while sleep deprived.

 Before he can pull out of the parking lot, there’s a knock at his window. Gakushu looks up, and sees a frowning Akabane.

 “What now?” Gakushu sighs, rolling down the window.

 “Well, apparently, they don’t take guests at five in the morning.” Akabane says, pouting slightly. Gakushu frowns.

 “Just bribe them, or something. You’re a bureaucrat, shouldn’t you get international privileges or something?”

 Akabane’s frown only deepened. “I _tried_ , but they were out of rooms…..”

 “Fine,” Gakushu grumbled. “Is there another hotel near here?”

 Now, for the first time since their bizarre reunion, Akabane looks slightly bashful. “Well, see the thing is, the only other hotel within a twenty-mile radius here was the one that my friends from China were staying at…”

 Gakushu stops. Frowns. Points a finger at Akabane, because manners be damned, it’s five in the morning, his delinquent classmate rival that he hasn’t seen in ten years has made him the impromptu accomplice of an international hit-and-run for nuclear bomb secrets or some bullshit, he has a meeting at eight-thirty, and he just wants to sleep, trackers be damned.

 “When I expand to Japan, you will personally organize all of my paperwork for me. The only thing I need to do will be to give my signature for them. You will ensure that my company is subject only to the most minimal of regulations, and exempt my company from all the tariffs for the first quarter for as long as I am the CEO- and you will make this exemption through _legal_ means. Otherwise, don’t even think for a second that I’m going to hesitate kicking you to the street and letting you wander the streets with the homeless at five in the morning.”

 Akabane looks unsurprised, and just flashes a lazy grin, walking around back to the passenger side of the car. “You drive a hard bargain, Second Place. But because I’m so generous, I’ll accept your deal, despite it being blatantly unfair and a ripoff.” He opens the door and gets back in, slinging his backpack back onto his lap.

 “Just so you know, if you didn’t already know where I live, I would never- wait, how did you know where I was anyway? And how did you get my number?” Gakushu asks, distracted and accusing, as they pull out the parking lot.

 “It’s pretty easy to track people in the golden age of the Internet,” Akabane replies. “I will admit that you were quite hard to track. Very impressive that you’d covered up so many of your fingerprints! But your colleagues, on the other hand,” Akabane clicks his tongue sympathetically, mercury eyes flashing at Gakushu in amusement. “They were hopeless. Be as hi-tech as you want, but none of that matters if the people you talk to use have such primitive security.”

 Gakushu frowns. He’d taken all the necessary precautions for his own personal technology, but he hadn’t considered the possibility of having his information accessed via trojan horse. He made a mental note to look into that as they turned into his garage.

 “Well,” Gakushu says, turning off the ignition. “Let’s go in.”

 

 This was already shaping up to be one of the most stressful days in Gakushu’s life, and it was only five thirty in the morning.


	2. not bad for an hour's work, i'd say!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> #letasanolive2k19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, writing an entire chapter of bullshit in one go: for the ship  
> um  
> i apologize  
> edit: um so ive read through this and fixed it up. its still horrendous but thats a given by now lol

 Akabane immediately makes himself at home by throwing himself onto the couch and faceplanting into a pillow.

 “Stop making out with my pillow,” Gakushu reprimands. The redhead turns his head to look at Gakushu briefly, then goes right back to trying to suffocate himself.

 “Akabane.”

 “Your couch is actually really soft,” Akabane notes, completely ignoring him. “Where’d you get it? I just moved in to a new place back overseas, and the only furniture I have is a crappy folding table and my mattress.”

 “Maybe I’ll tell you if you stop smearing your drool all over your face,” Gakushu retorts as he walks towards his desk, depositing his keys into a drawer and pulling out the chair.

 “Ugh. Mind if I take a shower? I’m all sweaty and gross from earlier.”

 “Second door on the right. Towels are in the cabinet next to the mirror,” Gakushu says, pointing down the hall. He glances at the clock as Akabane pads down the hall. If he goes back to bed now, he can still get in a reasonable hour of sleep before having to get up again. On the other hand, Gakushu is loathe to let Akabane have unfettered access to his house. Considering the dubious circumstances he had fished the redhead out of, it seems like a pretty dumb idea to leave such blatant openings for Akabane to exploit in his own house.

 An early breakfast it was, then. Damn it, Akabane.

 

 Gakushu is halfway done making the sandwiches when the fire alarm goes off. He whips his head around in alarm. Hadn’t Akabane gone to take a shower? How the fuck has he managed to start a fire, and now that Gakushu is paying attention, he can still hear the sounds of the shower coming from the bathroom so how the _fuck—_

 Gakushu skids to a stop in front of the bathroom just in time to narrowly avoid colliding with an equally startled Akabane, who is still dripping wet and wrapped up in a towel.

 “What—” Gakushu begins, before suddenly noticing the ungodly amount of steam coming from the bathroom. Akabane glances up at the blaring alarm, eyebrows furrowing.

 “Why is the fire alarm— that _is_ the fire alarm right?—  going off?” Akabane demands, as though the entirety of the state’s morning fog had not just been condensed into the size of one single room, and was not currently rolling out through the door of the bathroom like an overdone stage effect for a shitty horror movie.

 “It’s because of your bloody shower!” Gakushu answers incredulously. “Are you trying to boil yourself alive?”

 Akabane shrugs. “I only take my showers this hot occasionally. But the fire alarm usually doesn’t go off when I do.”

 Gakushu genuinely cannot tell if Akabane is joking or not. He really hopes that he was— now that he’s overcome his initial shock, Gakushu can see steam literally rising off of Akabane’s skin, and he still didn’t know why the fire alarm was going ballistic above their heads? It’s a good thing that Gakushu didn’t live in an apartment, or they’d have to deal with a whole slew of pissed off neighbors at five in the morning, all because Akabane decided to take a shower. He is about to say as much, but then Akabane slides past him to observe the offending fire alarm in its place on the ceiling. The redhead tilts his head back to observe the angrily ringing alarm with a suspiciously curious glint in his eye. Gakushu is about to turn to get a chair so he could disable the fire alarm, but something catches his eye. Pausing, Gakushu subtly takes a closer look at Akabane. Although the redhead had a towel wrapped around him, Gakushu can see a collection of bruises and what look like old knife scars scattered around the exposed area of his neck and shoulders. Absentmindedly, he wonders what exactly Akabane had done to get himself the scars, but he’s abruptly pulled out of his thoughts as Akabane turns towards him.

 “So, Asano, you’ve got a screwdriver, or do I need to fix this myself?”

 Akabane is still dripping wet from evacuating the shower so suddenly. The water droplets in his hair catch under the light, sparkling in his strawberry red hair. Gakushu’s response is absolutely not delayed for half a second by this observation.

 “What do you mean, fix it yourself? I’m going to go get a screwdriver and a chair, I’ll be right back.” Gakushu turns quickly, and walks back down the hall. What was that? He usually wasn’t one prone to lapses of attention, especially not in front of old classmates who were practically strangers. It must be because of the lack of sleep and breakfast. Whatever.

 

 Gakushu ends up disabling the fire alarm entirely, because two seconds after he reset the alarm, it started up again as Akabane resumed his shower. If his house burned down, well, Gakushu could always file a lawsuit against him for indirectly destroying the place. While Akabane does his best to cook himself alive in the shower, Gakushu finishes making the sandwiches. As he is in the middle of making the second sandwich, he hears the bathroom door open.

 “Ne, Asano. Would you mind lending me a shirt? I thought mine was okay to keep wearing, but it turns out I didn’t see this big ass hole in the back of it, and it’s kind of fucked now.”

 “I don’t think I’ve put my laundry away yet,” Gakushu calls as he cuts the egg. “There should be a stack of shirts in the laundry basket in the room across the bathroom.”

 “Gotcha, thanks~” Akabane sings. A few moments later, he walks into the kitchen just as Gakushu finishes making the second sandwich. His eyes widen in delight. “Breakfast? For me? Asano, you _shouldn’t_ have—”

 “Hey,” Gakushu says as Akabane reaches across the counter and swipes one of the sandwiches off the plate. “What happened to proper social decorum? Isn’t that something that you bureaucrats are supposed to be good at?”

 Mercury eyes gleam at him over the sandwich, which is already missing a sizeable chunk. “Manners are a social construct that are meant to be used on and off, Asano! There’s a time and place for everything.” The redhead pauses. “Also, is this dried tomato in the sandwich, or is it a blood clot?”

 Gakushu rolls his eyes. “The blood clot, obviously. Don’t you know that you can get entire packs of them at any American supermarket?”

 “Eh, that sounds believable. Don’t they sell machine guns there too?” Akabane shrugs, chewing another mouthful of his sandwich thoughtfully. “If blood makes sandwiches taste so good, then maybe I should use it the next time I make a sandwich too…”

 “Akabane, if you kill someone so you can put them in a sandwich, the lashback is all on you.” Gakushu picks up his own dried tomato and egg sandwich, and takes a bite. The only response he gets is a noncommittal hum as they stand in the kitchen on opposite sides of the counter, eating their sandwich in an amiable silence. Halfway through his sandwich, Akabane takes out his phone, and begins texting someone. It must be an intense conversation judging by the furrow that appears in Akabane’s brow, and, after a few moments, Akabane has abandoned the concept of eating a sandwich like a normal human being, but instead holds it between his teeth as he types rapidly into his phone. Somehow, he is still managing to take bites out of the sandwich and chew without dropping it. Gakushu leans against the wall amusedly as he takes in the scene, calmly eating his own sandwich. The redhead’s hair is still slightly damp, and strands of it fall messily over his eyes. He’s wearing Gakushu’s old MIT shirt but wears the same jeans that Gakushu had picked him up in. In the years since they’ve last seen each other, Gakushu has become slightly taller and broader than Akabane, so the borrowed shirt drapes loosely across Akabane’s frame. The collar of the too-wide shirt has slid down, and Gakushu can see yet more suspicious scars, no doubt accumulated throughout the years from the redhead’s delinquent habits.

 Gakushu doesn’t realize that Akabane has stopped texting until he hears a cough, and looks up to see the other looking back at him. Akabane’s eyebrows are raised in an inquiring way, but his eyes, which have widened slightly, and the pink at the tips of his ears, betray him. It is only now that Gakushu suddenly realizes that Akabane had noticed Gakushu staring at his neck like a creepy vampire, although it wasn’t really his fault, because the scars were a natural focal point on the otherwise smooth expanse of his creamy skin and— oh, whatever. Keeping his expression carefully neutral, Gakushu arches a brow back at Akabane. When in doubt, play ignorant.

 After a brief pause, the moment passes, and Akabane flashes a shit-eating grin at Gakushu, twisting the screen of his phone towards him.

 “Look! We’ve made the news!”

 Gakushu frowns, and leans over to take the phone from Akabane. There, on the headlines of the news article, reads, _“String of robberies hit visiting Chinese diplomats. Case under the investigation of the FBI.”_.

 The FBI? What the hell did Akabane take? Bemused, Gakushu looks up from the article to look incredulously at the redhead, who is wearing a relaxed and self-satisfied look.

 “What the hell?”

 “Pretty good, right?” The redhead crows. “Think of how much they must be panicking! A scandal! On international grounds….and those poor diplomats, they can’t even say what got stolen from them!” The smile on Akabane’s face is wildly gleeful and borderline maniacal.

 “Akabane, I swear, if you get us arrested—”

 “ _Please_ .”The insane smile subsides slightly, replaced by an indignant, almost pouty, look. “Give me more credit than that. You think the _American government_ would be able to trace me?”

 Gakushu skims through the rest of the article. Akabane is right, the article states that the investigators currently have no lead. Even if they somehow managed to link Gakushu to the incident, he’s confident in his abilities to evade suspicion and clear his record, and he was pretty sure that Akabane was equally capable of handling law enforcement. Besides, a more pressing concern comes in the _ping_ of a text message that shows up at the top of Akabane’s phone.

 “Ah,” Akabane says, and reaches for the phone, but Gakushu frowns as he reads the text.

 “What’s this about a-” before he can finish, Gakushu is cut off by Akabane lunging across the counter. Gakushu reflexively jerks back, and the two of them end up having a two second long, high speed wrestling match. In the scuffle, the phone gets knocked out of Gakushu’s hands and onto the floor, and Akabane takes the opportunity to kick it across the floor, away from Gakushu’s reach.

 “How old are you, Akabane?” Gakushu growls, as Akabane smoothly escapes the headlock that Gakushu had him in and dives across the room for his phone.

 “Sorry, oh great and scary CEO-sama! That’s restricted information, you know!” Akabane chirps cheerfully, slipping the phone into his pocket. “It’s against social decorum to butt into people’s private lives, you know—”

 “What do you mean private life, that was the goddamn—”

 “Shh, don’t worry about unnecessary things,” Akabane hushes. Before Gakushu can retort, an beeping noise from somewhere else in the house sounds. Both of them instinctively freeze and snap towards the direction of the sound, before Gakushu recognizes it and relaxes.

 “Is that your alarm?” Akabane asks suspiciously. Gakushu nods, glaring at Akabane. “This,” he jabs grumpily at the clock, which reads _06:45_ , “is when I’m supposed to wake up.”

 “Whoops, sorry ‘bout that.” The redhead responds easily, sounding completely unrepentant. Gakushu sighs.

 “When are you leaving, anyway? I need to get to the company by eight.”

 The redhead pauses. “Well, my flight back is scheduled for tonight, so….” Gakushu gets a sudden feeling of foreboding.

 “No.” he starts, but it was too late.

 “I’ll just tag along with you for the day! It’ll be fun, seeing the great CEO-sama in his element, don’t you think?” Akabane’s smile resembles a devil’s a bit too closely for comfort. Gakushu severely regrets ever letting Akabane into his house. In the span of one hour, Akabane had managed to set off his fire alarm twice, draw the attention of the national law enforcement, and fought Gakushu in his own kitchen over a text message— albeit an extremely out of the ordinary one, but still a text message nonetheless. If Akabane is let loose in his company for one entire day, Gakushu isn’t entirely sure that he would still have a functioning company by the end of it. Gakushu turns towards Akabane firmly, and points sternly at the red-haired devil.

 

 “No.” He repeats. Akabane only grins, baring sharp teeth and gleaming eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> if you've made it this far, thanks! i've got another chapter in the wings, so stay tuned? idk lol


End file.
